


A tale from the Western Wood

by Velobill



Category: Woodcutter - Fandom, forest - Fandom, werewolf - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:20:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26421766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velobill/pseuds/Velobill
Summary: A woodcutter and his wife encounter terrible creatures in the night





	A tale from the Western Wood

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you want to know more about this world.

A tale from the Western Wood

Gidron rubbed his aching right arm as he looked about the clearing. He felt satisfied with his work. It had been a long day. He started in the morning twilight by walking from the cabin he shared with his beloved wife down the Western Road to his trail and eventually the cluster of ancient linden trees he had found and marked years ago. The life of a wood cutter followed the seasons. In the winter it was tramping through snow to find the right trees and girdle them. Once the spring’s mud dried the dead trees were cut down and allowed to dry for a year. Summer meant returning to previous year’s caches to lop off branches, cut trunks into logs and split the logs into planks. By fall the logs were sledged to the West Road with a team of borrowed horses and with the help of Bera, his wife. 

Even though the life of a woodcutter was hard, Gidron loved it. The sylvan solitude relaxed him and the work was honest. But, he knew as his life’s stream had long since passed his fortieth year his days in the forest were numbered. Bera, encouraged him to take up carving during the deep winter nights and he soon found he had a knack for fashioning. As such he saved pieces of the best wood for himself, and the coin he started to earn creating utensils and mechanica was added to what his wife earned as a healer. Some day they would have to leave the forest. But that would be when he entered the snow years of his life and until then he could put up with the aches and pains he felt. Fortunately Bera was strong too as she would soon have to help him move the harvest to where it could be picked up by a trader. 

Gidron sat down on soft moss against a massive oak tree, it’s leaves scarlet against the clear sky. He took a sip of water from his leather flask and yawned as a white throated sparrow kept him company from a nearby branch with its whistle. Shadows had been growing longer about him and the sun laid two fists above the horizon. Even though fall days were shorter than summer days, they were more comfortable and Gidron soon fell asleep. When he awoke, the forest was dark and still. The full moon had already rose above the treetops and covered leaves and the ground with its soft silver glow, except where pitch dark tunnels were created by overhanging branches. He was annoyed. He had a long walk home and he wouldn’t even reach the West Road for at least an hour. But, his blazes were easy to see and he began to stroll along, his axe slung over shoulder with the confidence of a woodsman. Suddenly a branch snapped. 

Bera had waited patiently all night. She didn’t worry about her husband. He could easily take care of himself. They even joked how it was his fighting skill that attracted her to him. True, he was a good fighter. At one time he was the Captain of the King’s guard. But, it was his honestly joyous smile that first enamored Bera. Like Gidron, she too loved the life they made for themselves in the Western Wood. It was a place of peace and order in a chaotic world. When the sun began to paint the sky with its twilight morning glow through their cabin’s window, she placed a hunk of cheese and apple into a bag before she threw on her cloak and followed the West Road to meet her husband. Unlike other woodcutters, he rarely stayed in the wood for long periods of time and when he did, he would prepare himself with provisions. He had spent inadvertent nights in the forest before. But, he always started back to their cabin at sunrise. She anticipated finding him famished and the food she brought would be his break fast. 

With the sun rising above the tree tops, she reached the blazes that marked his trail. Had had seen no traces of her husband and a sense of dread started to creep over her like a spider crawling on a sleeping face. She, knew, Gidron’s vocation was dangerous. As a healer she tended woodcutters who had smashed themselves with axes or were crushed by a falling tree. Infections and bone breaks were common, even when someone is careful. If that had happened to her beloved, she would help him back and heal him as she did others. Bera heard the flies before she saw and smelled his body. For the second time in her life, she cried. 

Gidron had been torn apart and eviscerated. Blood, his blood was everywhere, his limbs had been torn off his body and scattered. His insides were ripped out, and worse, it looked as if chunks of him were bitten off his body, chewed, swallowed and regurgitated. Bera stared at the carnage. Her eyes stung with tears as she sobbed in mourning. She read the signs of what had happened sometime during the night. Gidron had been ambushed, his axe, its head still clad in its sheath still slung over his shoulder by its leather strap. But, she saw from the blood on his discarded dagger that he put up a fight and wounded one of his attackers. A single bloody print on a stone told Bera, Gidron had been killed by Lykos. From the marks on the forest floor she deduced there were three of them. 

“Oh merciful creator, please accept my beloved’s essence. Do not cast him cast away. Let him wander with you. He was good and kind. He only took life when he had to do so and he always repented for it. Let him enjoy eternity with you even if I cannot join him. It is by your will we travel the stream of life and it is your horn that calls us. Please accept my beloved’s essence.” Bera repeated her prayer over and over again as she gathered Gidron’s remains into her cloak. She had much to do before nightfall and moon once again rose as a fully radiant orb.

With the bright sun arcing through a cloudless sky like great arrow, Bera returned to their cabin and used her husband’s axe to chop the soil next to their son’s gave. She shoveled a deep pit and laid Gidron’s body to rest. She took his sword from where it hung, cleaned and polished it one last time and placed it on him. Then using stones from the coral they built together, Bera covered her beloved husband. Finally completed as the sun neared the horizon, she went to the stream that flowed near their home and filled a jug. 

“Oh merciful creator, please consecrate this water. Let it protect my beloved. Let it keep his body safe from the demons and monsters that walk the world.” She knew what the vomiting of her husband’s remains meant. It was the ultimate desecration of the Lykos. It was their way of telling the universe they had damned their victim. Even if Bera chose to bring Gidron’s body to a cemetary, it would not be buried among other people. She had to consecrate the ground he laid in herself with her prayer and water. She took the jug and as she poured it onto the pile of stones that marked his grave she prayed for her son, and her husband’s ancestors asking them to hold a lantern so Gidron could find is way to them. 

There was no time for Bera to seek safety. Once the sun set the Lykos would return to the West Wood. They would follow Gidron’s blood scent to the cabin and kill whomever they found in the same brutal way they killed him. Bera had no choice but to accept her fate. She closed the door behind her, its latch was no defense. She closed the window shutters knowing no barricade would stop the Lykos. She rekindled a fire in the hearth and let it burn brightly throughout the night.

There was a rustling outside. Bera’s home was being circled, at first from edge of the wood. But, movement grew closer and closer. 

“Human, woman human, let us in. We won’t harm you.” Said one croaking voice on the other side of her cabin door. 

“No human, we want you to live as we have our way.” Said another voice.

“We know you are in there, let us in. We won’t tary long.” Said the first voice accompanied by laughter from a third. 

The door suddenly burst open. The three Lykos, each a massive fur covered half wolf, half human, rushed into the cabin’s single room snarling with lust. Their shadows danced with hatred on its log walls. Bera waited behind the door and slowly closed it. The creatures turned to discover to their destruction a great she-bear holding an axe. 

-30-


End file.
